Sunday, June 17, 2012

FANI STERN'S PARENTS

Nana had this photo ondisplay forever. My grand-daughter knows it will be hers.

Click to enlarge

This is not about my grandmother's mother, Regina Bauer Rosenzweig, who appears here on the right. Or as we call her - "Nana's mother."

It isn't even about her parents Simon/Shemaya Bauer and Fani Stern.

It's about her grandparents, and in particular, her mother's parents.

But first a bit of background. The Bauers had seven children, all of whom lived to adulthood. The children were born and raised in Kunszentmiklos Hungary, where the Bauers lived. The Sterns were from Kalosca. All this I knew from Nana.

The map on the left shows a section of Hungary directly south of Budapest, including the towns I will be discussing here.

Some years ago, I acquired copies of all the Bauer records from Kunszentmiklos and organized them into a rudimentary outline. It was clear from those records that earlier Bauers had lived in Apostag, not far away and the whole lot of them seem to have moved in the same period, perhaps because of legal restrictions on where Jews could live. I have a set of Bauer records from Apostag, but have not done anything with them.

At the same time, I acquired the marriage record of Simon Bauer and Fani Stern.﻿

The marriage in Kalosca on 29 January 1862, 19 Shevat 5612 of Simon son of Lasar Bauer, age 28, of Kunszentmiklos and Fani daughter of Salomon Stern, age 21, of Kalosca. (Click to enlarge - it's the second record on the page.)

This document gave me both the ages of the bride and groom and the names of their fathers.﻿ In the case of Simon's father Lasar, we have a Lazar Bauer in Kunszentmiklos, married to a Roza Lowenstein. Lazar was born in 1791 and died in 1867. They may be Simon's parents - or not. I have not recorded them as such, but have recorded that Simon's father is Lasar.

I searched Kalosca records for any Salomon Stern and I found a death and two births.

This Salomon Stern died in Kalosca in May 1862 at age 57. That was a few months after Fani's wedding. Fifty-seven is within the norm for Fani's father's age, but who knows if this is actually the right person! As I say in one of my lectures, even if I am quite sure this is the right person, once I record him as such, I won't re-examine it later. Nor will my research heirs, should I be so fortunate as to have any.

I also found two births for children of Salomon Stern, a daughter Sali in 1851 and a son Wilhelm in 1853. The earlier record is very poor quality, so I bring the one from 1853 here.

Wilhelm Stern, born in Kalosca, 2 February 1853 to Salomon Stern and Beti Grunwald

Now obviously it is tempting to say that our Fani Stern is the daughter of this same Salomon Stern and Beti Grunwald. But the truth is, even if we know that this is her father, we have no idea if Beti Grunwald - whose children were born nine and eleven years after Fani - is Fani's mother. Problem is, the Hungarian National Archives and LDS have Kalosca Jewish records only for the period 1850-1895, so we have no idea if there were children between Fani and the later two.

In preparing this blog, I had a discussion with Beth Long, a professional researcher in Budapest, and she explains that after 1895, all the records are part of the civil record, rather than the Jewish record. These records exist for Kalosca (as well as Kunszentmiklos) and can be searched. There are certainly deaths after 1895 for people born in the 1830s and 1840s, so perhaps we can find more there.

I'll get back to this a bit later. Meantime, here are some Jewish population numbers. In Kalosca, the Jews were 4-6% of the total population. These numbers are from Yad Vashem's Pinkas Kehillot.

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This blog is meant for my genealogy interests, personal and professional. No partisan politics, no Steelers.
Author of "ENDOGAMY: One Family, One People."
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